Y! Sports Biz: Come ride shotgun

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Y! Sports Biz: Come ride shotgun

Mon, Aug 10, 2026 ·

5 min read

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👋 Welcome back!Let's get down to biz.

In today's edition:NASCAR thinks outside the oval, fans say hello to Highmark, more betting commercials are coming, Olympic ticket prices storm the podium, the Mavs make a trade offer, and more.

Time to show you the money...

🏎️ Nascar's look under the helmet

"I can be honest, right? I don't want to be this tough guy. I'm hurtin'," a sweaty and exhausted Chad Ochocinco confides in NASCAR star Ryan Blaney.

Buckle up:Ochocinco is Blaney's guest on NASCAR's "On the Gas" YouTube series, and he's about to begin his last challenge of a day spent riding shotgun at 180 mph. The show is reminiscent of "Hot Ones," only with high speeds instead of hot wings, and it's just one piece of a growing content strategy for a NASCAR eager to show its fun side.

A new vehicle for growth:NASCAR has emphasized premium content as a vehicle for attracting new fans, thinking outside the oval to engage audiences beyond race weekend.

From " On the Gas ," which has averaged 858K views across four episodes, to " The San Diego Mini Movie ," a 28-minute cinematic experience that has fielded nearly 2.8 million views to date, the investment is significant.
"As we're looking to broaden our fan base, we have to think about different on-ramps to bring new people into the fold," explains Jess Smith, VP, Brand and Content at NASCAR. "How do we create content that feels relevant in culture and entertainment? A lot of our content strategy is: 'How do we have fun?'"

Under the helmet:NASCAR is insistent about the quality and entertainment appeal of its racing product, but minting relatable stars is a challenge in a sport where personalities are hidden behind a helmet. A focus of the content strategy is offering fans a new perspective by showcasing the drivers' personalities and highlighting the sport's rigors.

"Our racing product is fantastic, so if we can get people to understand who our drivers are and their personality, we believe the on-ramps into the competition piece will be easy," says Smith.
"It's really hard to relate to motorsports for someone who's never done it before, because it's not as accessible as other sports," Ryan Blaney explains. Blaney's imperative in "On the Gas" is to provide guests (and viewers) with an unexpected new perspective by "throwing them in the belly of the beast" to show them the realities of life behind the wheel.

Up and to the right:The strategy appears to be paying dividends. NASCAR's YouTube subscribers are up nearly 20% in 2026, with approximately 206 million video views through July, according to data from SocialBlade . Its monthly average view count is up 81% over 2025.

What to watch:The question is whether this digital growth can deliver increases in race viewership and attendance. That's an endurance race, but for the moment, the answer is complicated.

This season's viewership has been a mixed bag, with reasons for encouragement undercut by unique struggles with Nielsen's new "Big Data" methodology.
While attendance remains adrift from its early 2000s peak, NASCAR has enjoyed a summer streak of sellouts.

Checkered flag:It's not enough in the modern sports landscape to show up on race or game day and expect audience growth. NASCAR's emphasis on premium, non-race content is earning attention and generating incremental opportunities to forge new lifelong fans, greeting them with a promise of fun, rather than just waiting for them to stumble upon the track.

📸Money on the Field

Orchard Park, New York -Josh Allen and the Bills took to the field at Highmark Stadium for the first time in front of fans for a training camp practice on Saturday.

Home, sweet home: The new stadium cost $2.1 billion to build, significantly overrunning initial $1.4 billion projections. Public funding accounted for $850 million of the total, split between $600 million from New York State and $250 million from Erie County, with ownership absorbing the cost overruns. The stadium's debut earned mixed reviews …

London, England —New signing Bruno Guimaraes said hello to Arsenal supporters during a friendly match against Borussia Dortmund.

Old friends leave Newcastle: Guimaraes arrives from Newcastle, which has sold three key players (Sandro Tonali, Guimaraes, and Anthony Gordon) for a total of $317 million this summer. Their departures follow the record $170 million sale of Alexander Isak last year, as PIF-owned Newcastle continues to hemorrhage top talent.

Bronx, New York —George Lombard Jr. made his New York Yankees debut last week, commemorating the occasion with a home run.

That's a keeper: The debut patch affixed to Lombard's left arm will also mark the occasion for collectors, as it will be removed from the jersey and included in a Topps trading card. The potential for pinstriped superstardom will no doubt make Lombard's debut patch card a hot commodity. Ben Rice's debut patch card sold for just under $69k in March.

📈 Sports on the Street

Over 1,500 companies scheduled their quarterly earnings releases for last week. Among that sea of results were sports and sports-adjacent businesses with no shortage of interesting nuggets to share. Here are the tidbits that caught our eye.

🏈 Brace for sports betting ads during football season

"We anticipate football season being quite the arms race this year. You're going to have prediction markets that are targeting customers for the first football season ever… We already assumed it was going to be a very aggressive and irrational marketing spend, advertising, and new customer acquisition approach this football season."

— Penn Entertainment ( PENN ) CEO and president, Jay Snowden

Bet on it:Fans should be prepared for an onslaught of marketing during the upcoming NFL and college football seasons. Competition is fierce as prediction market upstarts seek market share and legacy sportsbooks try to defend their own, while also marketing their prediction-market products in states where traditional betting remains illegal.

⛳️ The U.S. golf business marches ahead

"The National Golf Foundation carves up the country into eight regions. Every region is up year to date, which is unusual because, typically, you've got an outlier weather pattern that's going to affect one region over another. … The other piece I'd add is they track public and private access. Public play, which is about 75% or so of total rounds in the U.S., is up at a greater rate than private play."

— Acushnet ( GOLF ) CEO David Maher

Hitting fairways:Both Acushnet and Callaway cited the sport's structural health in their comments, highlighting the game's ability to weather economic volatility and grow, even in the more affordable segments of the market. Golf thrives in a K-shaped economy, and a K-shape may not be concerningly pronounced within the sport.

📺 Nothing drives ad revenue quite like sports.

"Advertising revenue during the quarter was notably strong, increasing 78%, with growth fueled by continued strength of Tubi, healthy advertising trends across the broader Fox portfolio, and our broadcast of the first stages of the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup. At a time when audiences are increasingly fragmented, the World Cup demonstrated the unique power of Fox to deliver live premium sports that bring people together at scale."

-Fox ( FOX ) CEO Lachlan Murdoch

Unparalleled scale:The World Cup was the primary driver behind an $838 million lift in Q4 advertising revenues for Fox, and that doesn't include the full benefit of games that fell in July, rather than June. The results further illustrate the immense commercial power of premier live sports rights, and the battle for future tournaments could be ruthless.*

*The commercial power of premier live sports rights is just as conspicuous in their absence. Unlike Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery's advertising revenues fell 22% in Q2, or $492 million, with the loss of NBA rights negatively impacting year-over-year growth by 20%.

⚡Lightning Round

🏛️ Senate punts Protect College Sports Act:Politics ultimately prevented a Senate vote on the Protect College Sports Act, with amendments and opposition foiling any last-minute hopes. Now, the bill faces a wait of at least five weeks before a potential September vote, an eternity for the winds to change and further turmoil to emerge.

🏟️ Patriots scramble over noncompliant turf:Just a month after the natural grass pitch at Gillette Stadium made way for artificial turf, the Patriots will have to replace that artificial turf , which has been deemed noncompliant by NFL and NFLPA testing protocol. The episode is the latest in a spirited debate over NFL playing surfaces.

⚽️ Bezos group close to Liverpool stake:The consortium that includes Jeff Bezos and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is reportedly closing in on a deal to acquire a significant minority stake in Liverpool, according to a report from Sky News . An announcement from FSG could reportedly come as soon as this week.

⛳️ In related news:This morning, FSG and TMRW Sports announced that FSG has acquired an inaugural team in WTGL, the simulator-based women's golf league. The team will compete as Boston Common Golf, extending the brand built by its men's team in TGL.

See what else is trending on the Yahoo Sports Business Hub .

🏈 29 Days of Fantasy is here!

It's Yahoo Fantasy Football's 29th year, and to celebrate, we're kicking off 29 Days of Fantasy!

What's happening:Starting today, Yahoo Sports is dropping a brand-new fantasy feature every single day for 29 days straight. That's 29 days, 29 features, all built to help you dominate your league in 2026.

Today's new feature:Custom Recipes!

How it works: We're making it easy for leagues to try new ways to play with unique scoring formats curated by the celebrities, creators, and talent users know and love. Commissioners can apply Custom Recipes in the Scoring Settings section of Commissioner tools or in the Create League flow when creating a new league.

Go deeper: Tap into the 29 Days of Fantasy here !

🎟️ "Once in a lifetime" strikes twice in three years

The second once-in-a-lifetime sports experience in three U.S. summers has propelled LA 2028's premier tickets to uncharted territory, comfortably the greatest heights in Olympics history. Data compiled by The Athletic in the graphic above illustrates the sticker shock.

Between the lines:While the numbers above will make headlines, they don't reflect the broad assortment of more reasonably priced seats. According to LA28's organizing committee, 1 million tickets will sell for $28 apiece, with nearly half of all tickets costing less than $200.

Yes, but:The problem, though, is that affordable tickets are disappearing quickly through various presale processes. Tickets may be priced reasonably on the primary market, but that's not how most consumers will experience them. Demand for the events will markedly outpace supply, particularly at lower price levels, sending secondary-market prices soaring, just as they did with the World Cup.

Bottom line:The exorbitant ticket prices from this summer's World Cup are only beginning to fade from memory. But as they do, tickets to the 2028 Olympics are swiftly replacing them in the "They cost what?!" discourse.

📆 This Day in History: Red Devils Debut

Today, wealthy individuals and institutional investors alike are chasing ownership in some of the most celebrated franchises in sports. But for 14 years now, shares in one of the world's most popular and historic clubs have been available for public investment.

On this day in 2012,Manchester United IPO'd on the New York Stock Exchange, listed under the ticker MANU .

At the peak of their powers:At the time of the IPO, United was one year removed from its 19th Premier League title. It secured number 20 the following season, which would be Sir Alex Ferguson's last in charge. The club has not returned to the peak of English football since, and Michael Carrick is United's 11th manager (including interims) since 2013.

Catch up quick:Since 2012, the club's revenues have more than doubled from £320 million to £667 million. However, trouble beneath the top line has slowed the rise of shares and highlighted the difficulty of sustaining a competitive club, even as revenues soar.

Operating expenses are up even more than revenue, rising from £274 million in 2012 to £734 million in 2025.
Net debt has also increased from £366 million to £551 million, saddling the club with £37 million in interest payments in 2025.

Lagging to leading: Since MANU shares debuted at a $2.3 billion market cap, they have returned 63%, just a shade behind the S&P 500's 439%. But 2026 has seen both the team's on-pitch and stock-market performance roar back to life. The squad qualified for this upcoming season's Champions League, while shares have outperformed the market by 21%.

Public pressure:Manchester United is one of few publicly traded sports teams, as public market valuations continue to lag what could be achieved in private stake sales. Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought 27.7% of United at a reported valuation above $5 billion in 2024, but even now, the club's enterprise value sits at $4.7 billion, far below Sportico's $6.5 billion estimate .

🏟️ Over/Under: Costs so high at SoFi?

The Bills' $2.1 billion Highmark Stadium is the first new NFL stadium since SoFi Stadium opened its doors in Los Angeles in 2020.

Over/Under:Did SoFi, which broke ground in 2016, cost over or under $3.5 billion to build?

Answer at the bottom.

🤝 Mavs make a trade offer

Remember when we told you not to be surprised when Cooper Flagg's debut patch card sells for more than $1 million? Well, the Dallas Mavericks want a piece of the action.

Trade offer:In return for the card, the Mavs are offering a haul headlined by two premium lower level season tickets for 32 years and a Flagg-signed game-worn rookie jersey, in addition to a host of experiences.

Prepare for rejection:For the ultimate Mavericks fan, that generous offer might be tempting. But chances are the lucky person who pulls the card won't have a closet stuffed with Flagg and Nowitzki jerseys. Unfortunately for the Mavs, that person has handsome cash bounties to choose from.

For example, Goldin is offering a $1.5 million cash advance for the card, with additional upside coming the collector's way if bidding surpasses that price.
The Pirates issued a similar ticket-based bounty for Paul Skenes' debut patch card. That offer was rebuffed, and the card ultimately sold at auction to Dick's Sporting Goods for $1.1 million.

Stiff competition:Teams are waking to the value of their coveted collectibles and memorabilia, and it's not just the debut patch cards. Just look at the Knicks keeping the OG Anunoby tip-in ball or Josh Harris buying Jayden Daniels' most coveted 1-of-1 rookie card for $500,000 to display at Northwest Stadium. These assets are fan attractions, but if they hit the open market, teams shouldn't expect a hometown discount.

Over/Under answer:Over! SoFi reportedly cost more than $5 billion to build, only a hair above initial projections of $2.7 billion when construction began.

Thanks for reading! Wanna talk shop? Follow me on X and Linkedin , or drop me a line: dylan.dittrich@yahooinc.com .

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